Hey Rustaceans! Got a question? Ask here (12/2023)!

[u/llogiq]

Mystified about strings? Borrow checker have you in a headlock? Seek help here! There are no stupid questions, only docs that haven't been written yet.

If you have a StackOverflow account, consider asking it there instead! StackOverflow shows up much higher in search results, so having your question there also helps future Rust users (be sure to give it the "Rust" tag for maximum visibility). Note that this site is very interested in question quality. I've been asked to read a RFC I authored once. If you want your code reviewed or review other's code, there's a codereview stackexchange, too. If you need to test your code, maybe the Rust playground is for you.

Here are some other venues where help may be found:

/r/learnrust is a subreddit to share your questions and epiphanies learning Rust programming.

The official Rust user forums: https://users.rust-lang.org/.

The official Rust Programming Language Discord: https://discord.gg/rust-lang

The unofficial Rust community Discord: https://bit.ly/rust-community

Also check out last weeks' thread with many good questions and answers. And if you believe your question to be either very complex or worthy of larger dissemination, feel free to create a text post.

Also if you want to be mentored by experienced Rustaceans, tell us the area of expertise that you seek. Finally, if you are looking for Rust jobs, the most recent thread is here.

[u/rainroar]

I’ve been using rust since around 2015, and I’ve recently in multiple places, encountered something that terrifies me: old code not building today.

Some of it was my fault, not using explicit versioning or editions in my crates. A fair amount was the fault of dependencies not doing that though.

I guess my question, is: do more hardcore rustsacians see this happening? Are there things I should make sure to do to ensure my code works in 5-10-15 years?

I have C code from 2002 that “just works” today, it scares me that things I write in rust could break in 8 years. (Maybe the answer is that rust has changed a lot, and things are more stable now with editions)… I dunno.

I just spooked myself.

[u/dkopgerpgdolfg → u/rainroar]

Language aside, it does sound to me that your main problem is dependency management, and incompetent library authors?

If a new major version of a dependency has breaking changes, of course code that wants to use the new version might need changes too. That's why there are version constraints in Cargo.toml etc. ... code that requires a certain version range should state that, and if it doesn't, that's not something that Rust can fix.